Page 126 of Kings Don't Break
It’s what we do first thing in the morning—soak up the quiet, my hands stroking her body, mapping out the shape of her. Morning wood’s no stranger, tension gathered in my groin area, but there’s no rush between us. We wake up slowly, with her fingers sliding in my hair and her silky thigh curling over mine.
When things eventually heat up, it’s still slow. It’s greedy passion, taking our time ’til we’re both so damn turned on, we can’t stand it. I sink into her warmth, and we rock together between deep kisses and moans.
And when she explodes, she claws at me like she’s lost in a sea of pleasure and I’m her lifeboat. The morning light falls on her beautiful face as her eyes roll back and she writhes beneath me. I’m close behind her, my hips at work. My dick buried deep.
I let go and find myself swimming in the same waters. The same pleasurable tide washes over me. I groan and pump my hips and nuzzle her face with mine.
Feeling so fucking good I’m on top of the world.
…then I wake up and I remember it’s just memories. I’m lying on a cot in a six by ten jail cell that’s got a permanent sticky feel to the air. Privacy doesn’t exist when anybody walking by can see me through the iron bars, and peace and quiet are a thing of the past—I can hear every damn move the officer on shift makes from down the hall.
I roll onto my back and stare up at the dreary popcorn ceiling riddled with what’s probably asbestos.
Over the past few days, it’s my memories that have been getting me by. The thought that they’ll become real again once I’m cleared of the charges being brought up against me. But it’s in sobering moments like this, still groggy from sleep, where I wonder if I’m giving myself false hope.
If I’m really fucked.
“Get up, Cash. Your lawyer’s here to see you,” grunts Symonds, the officer on shift. From what I’ve gathered, he’s the rookie at the station, so he routinely gets the shittiest assignments and shifts. One of those being oversight of the holding cells. He thwacks his rolled up copy of the Pulsboro Tribune against the iron bars. “Come on, come on. We ain’t got all day.”
My lawyer’s waiting for me in the briefing room dressed in a wrinkled suit and loosened tie. Flecks of dandruff dust his otherwise dark brown hair and he’s got bags under his eyes. Even by public defender standards, he’s falling short. He flashes a crooked-toothed smile at me and then cracks open his battered briefcase.
“Hello, Mr. Cash. I’m Reggie Hendricks, your court-ordered public defender. How about you have a seat, and we’ll review what’s happening?”
I drag back the chair opposite him at the table and then plop down. Though my body language reads as relaxed—I’m sitting half slumped, my legs spread and wide, my hands folded on my abdomen—I couldn’t feel more fucking stressed out.
If this is the guy that’s supposed to get me off, things are bleaker than I thought.
Hendricks spends the next twenty minutes reviewing the charges that have been brought against me. He outlines the definition of each one and then proceeds to explain the potential prison time at stake for depending on the final verdict. Then he goes into the court trial process and what I can expect.
As he rambles on, he sounds bored. More than once, he loses his train of thought and has to rifle through his stack of papers, licking the pad of his finger to separate some sheets that have stuck together.
“Where was I?” he mutters, then his eyes widen behind his round glasses. “Oh, yes… err, at which point you go to trial, all evidence and testimony will be?—”
“Skip this shit,” I interrupt, sitting up. I pin him with a hard, agitated stare from across the table. “You’re my defense attorney. Shouldn’t we be going over my defense? How you’re going to get me off?”
His stack of papers slips through his fingers and floats to a scattered mess on the ground. He rushes to pick them up and bumps his head on the corner of the table. I roll my eyes, hopping to my feet, and turn toward the door.
“I don’t have time for these games. Go public defend somebody else. I’d be better off repping myself.”
“Cash, not so fast,” says Officer Symonds. He’s waiting just outside the door when I try to step out. “You’ve got another visitor. Your last one for the day. This ain’t no damn hotel. It’s a jail.”
I sit back down as Hendricks shuffles out clutching his crinkled papers and battered briefcase. Two more people enter—one I recognize and one I don’t.
Mace juts his chin at me as he walks in alongside a Black man in a suit that puts my short-lived public defender to shame. I figure out what’s going on almost immediately and shake my head, my long hair an uncombed, scraggly mess that frames my face.
“If this is what I think it is?—”
“The club’s not letting you go down for this shit, Cash,” Mace says. “We’ve used funds to get you a lawyer. A real lawyer. This is Isaac Druthers.”
Druthers holds out his hand to shake mine. “Let me start by saying, I’ve been reviewing the file they’ve put together on you. It won’t be easy, but it’s also not hopeless. There are a few ways we can tackle this.”
Before I know it, we’re sitting down to specifics on my case—real specifics. Not the canned bullshit Hendricks had tried passing off as representation.
It goes past the point of being able to turn Druthers away. Even if I don’t want the MC funding my defense, the ball’s in motion. He’s here and he’s already putting together a detailed defense for my case.
Besides, if the roles were reversed, I’d do the same for Mace. Whether he wanted me to or not.
“We’ll meet again Thursday,” Druthers says after an hour has passed. He checks his watch and then rises out of his chair. “Your arraignment is in a week, then we’ll go from there.”
